Salman Rafi Sheikh
Washington Rolls Out a ‘New’ Approach to Encircling China
The Joe Biden administration’s ‘new’ Indo-Pacific strategy document contains nothing ‘new’ insofar as the cardinal objective of this strategy is concerned i.e., ‘encircling China.’ Interestingly enough, the strategy has been revealed despite the Biden administration’s various rhetorical claims that the administration is not seeking to build up a global coalition against China, or that...
Why Would Washington Assist the Afghan Taliban?
When the US decided to withdraw its military forces from Afghanistan in mid-2021, Joe Biden assured his Afghan counterpart, Ashraf Ghani, of full US support against the Taliban (banned in Russia) to preserve the so-called “democratic” gains the country made during twenty years of US occupation. Evidence that we have previously examined clearly indicates that the US...
On the China-GCC Free Trade Agreement
Given how the US withdrawal from the Middle East has impacted Washington’s ties with the Gulf countries, an opportunity certainly exists for the latter to pursue their ties with Beijing more freely than was the earlier the case. There is, in fact, already signs that China and the Gulf may well be taking concrete steps towards the China-Gulf Coopertaion Council...
